ABOUT IMATS LAB
Welcome to the IMaTS Lab - Intelligent Mobility and Transportation Safety Lab at McGill University. We are committed to fostering interdisciplinary research in sustainable urban mobility, transportation safety, and emerging technologies. Our lab is dedicated to addressing the challenges and opportunities in mobility and transportation to create safer and more efficient systems.
Mission & Objectives
- At IMaTS Lab, our core values guide our approach to research and innovation. We prioritize integrity, collaboration, and impact in our pursuit of advancing sustainable urban mobility and transportation safety. Our mission is to drive positive change through cutting-edge research and knowledge dissemination.
Research & Development
The IMaTS Lab at McGill leads R&D in intelligent mobility and transportation safety. Our projects span the development of methodologies, decision-support tools, and technological solutions for road and railway transportation. Supported by provincial and federal research granting agencies, the lab delivers innovative solutions and knowledge to cities, government agencies, and industry partners.
RESEARCH TEAM
Meet the dedicated professionals who form the backbone of IMaTS Lab. Our diverse team brings together expertise in various disciplines to address complex challenges in mobility and transportation safety. Together, we are committed to making a difference in the way we move and ensure safety in transportation.
Team Lead
Lab's head
Luis Miranda-Moreno, PhD
Luis Miranda-Moreno has been an Associate Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at McGill University since 2008. With over 20 years of focus on sustainable transportation systems, road safety, and innovation, his work encompasses the development and integration of new technologies and decision-support tools for road safety, emission modelling, and road design. His research seeks to develop methodologies and solutions to better understand and reduce injury risks, promote sustainable urban mobility, and enhance the resilience of transportation systems. He has collaborated with international organizations such as the Inter-American Development Bank and the WRI Ross Center, federal agencies such as Transport Canada, and various provincial governments. His projects span cities worldwide, and his research is supported by NSERC, CFI, Mitacs, and FQRNT.
Postdocs
Civil Engineering
Alejandro Pérez Villaseñor
Alejandro holds a Ph.D. in Transportation Engineering and has research interests in Bus Rapid Transit systems, last-mile mobility, and road safety. He holds a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from Universidad Popular Autónoma del Estado de Puebla and a master’s degree in construction project management from Universidad de las Américas Puebla, both in Mexico. For seven years, he worked as program director for Civil Engineering at Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey, in Mexico. His current research with IMaTS Lab focuses on the impact of transportation systems and infrastructure on well-being.
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Electrical Engineering
Jônatas Augusto Manzolli
Jônatas holds a PhD in Sustainable Energy Systems, with a particular focus on public electric transportation. He also obtained an MSc in Energy for Sustainability from the University of Coimbra (Portugal) and a BSc in Electrical Engineering from both the University of Campinas (Brazil) and the Technical University of Munich (Germany). Previously, he worked as a software developer at IAV Automotive Engineering in Munich, Germany, and served as a research fellow at the Institute for Systems Engineering and Computers at Coimbra (INESCC) in Portugal. In 2020, he was honoured with the SYLFF award from the Tokyo Foundation for Young World Leaders for his research on electric bus systems. His research interests encompass optimization, artificial intelligence, urban transportation, and electric vehicles.
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Transportation Planning
Yubo Jiao
Yubo Jiao is a Postdoctoral Researcher with the Department of Civil Engineering at the McGill University, working with Prof. Luis Miranda-Moreno and Prof. Jiangbo Yu. He received his B.Sc. degree in Transportation, his M.Eng. degree in Traffic and Transportation Engineering, and his Ph.D. degree in Transportation Planning and Management from Southwest Jiaotong University, Chengdu, China, in 2016, 2019, and 2024, respectively. He was an international visiting graduate student with University of Waterloo, Canada, from 2022 to 2024. His research focuses on Human-Machine Collaborative Transportation, including driving behavior modeling, application of large language models in traffic planning and safety, data-driven traffic safety analysis, and intelligent transportation systems.​
Transportation Engineering
Mingjian Wu
Mingjian Wu is a Postdoctoral Researcher at McGill University under Dr. Luis Miranda-Moreno. He has a Master’s and PhD in Transportation Engineering from the University of Alberta, supervised by Dr. Tae J. Kwon and co-supervised by Dr. Karim El-Basyouny. His research centers on Smart and Sustainable Transportation, using data-driven methods to improve safety, mobility, and sustainability. His work includes winter road condition estimation, traffic safety analysis, ITS facility optimization, and traffic volume estimation. He employs statistical modeling, machine learning, deep learning, geostatistics, and GIS for solving transportation issues. Outside of research, Mingjian enjoys fitness and travel, seeking new experiences both academically and personally.
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PhD students
Civil Engineering
Xinghang Zhu
Xinghang has been pursuing her Ph.D. at McGill University since September 2023. She obtained her B.S. and M.S. degrees in Traffic Engineering from Central South University and Shanghai Jiao Tong University, in 2020 and 2023. Currently, she is co-supervised by Prof. Luis Miranda-Moreno and Prof. Sun Lijun. Her research interests include sustainable transportation systems, spatiotemporal data analysis, and traffic carbon reduction.
Civil Engineering
Qiujia Liu
Qiujia (Choga) Liu has been a Ph.D. student at McGill University since September 2022. She received her BE and MSc in transportation engineering from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China, in 2019 and 2022. She is currently co-supervised by Prof. Luis Miranda-Moreno and Prof. Lijun Sun. Her research interests include deep learning, spatial-temporal data analysis, and human behavior understanding and modeling.
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Civil Engineering
Xiting Zhang
Xiting has been a PhD student in Civil Engineering at McGill University since September 2023, currently a member in of both Prof. Luis Miranda-Moreno and Prof. Lijun Sun 's research groups. She obtained her Bachelor's degree from Chang'an University and pursued her Master's degree at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). Her research interests lie in machine learning, social interactions for autonomous driving, and network optimization.
Civil Engineering
Chenglong You
Chenglong (Yusif) You has been a Ph.D. student at McGill University since 2025. He holds an MSc in Civil Engineering from McGill University (2024) and a BSc in Hydrology and Water Resources Engineering from Sichuan University (2020). His research focuses on climate model downscaling and the impacts of climate change on transportation systems, particularly how extreme weather events such as snowstorms, floods, and heatwaves affect traffic resilience.
Master Students
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Transportation Engineering
Laurel Johannson
Laurel Johannson is a master’s student in Transportation Engineering with IMaTS. Her research interests are rail infrastructure and operations in Canada, with a focus on passenger rail. She received her bachelor’s degree in Civil Engineering from McGill in 2024, and previously worked as a Project Coordinator on rail and transit projects in Toronto.
Transportation Engineering
Qi Chen
Qi Chen is an MSc student in Transportation Engineering at McGill University. His work focuses on transport systems, mobility analysis, and data-driven approaches to improve urban transportation planning.
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Transportation Engineering
Catalina Osorio Giraldo
Catalina Osorio Giraldo is a Civil Engineering M.Eng. student at McGill University with a background in road and transportation engineering. She brings professional experience in transport infrastructure, materials quality assurance, and civil engineering practice.
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Transportation Engineering
Narges Ahmadi
Narges Ahmadi is a graduate student at McGill University with research interests in sustainable mobility, cycling accessibility, and transportation planning. Her work supports safer, more inclusive, and low-stress urban transport systems.
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Collaborators
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Economics Department, Université Laval
Philippe Barla
Philippe Barla is a Professor in the Department of Economics at Université Laval. He teaches industrial organisation, microeconomics, environmental economics, and cost-benefit analysis at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. He has developed extensive audiovisual materials for online courses and has collaborated on projects examining transport choices and environmental issues. Philippe has also contributed to organising workshops and summer schools on urban mobility and non-parametric econometrics, demonstrating his commitment to innovative teaching and applied research in economics.
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Department of Civil Engineering, McGill University
Lijun Sun
Professor Sun’s research centers on the area of urban computing and smart transportation, developing innovative methodologies and applications to address efficiency, resilience, and sustainability issues in urban transportation systems. In particular, he is interested in integrating advances in mobile sensing and machine learning into human mobility modeling, agent-based simulation, and intelligent transportation systems to explore how big data, artificial intelligence, and cyber-physical systems could benefit urban life and help build smart cities. His work has been featured in popular media outlets, including Wired, Citylab, Scientific American, and MIT Technology Review.
Department of Decision Sciences, HEC Montréal
Aurelie Labbe
Aurelie Labbe received the Ph.D. degree in statistics from the University of Waterloo, Canada, in 2005. She is currently a Full Professor at the Department of Decision Science, HEC Montréal. She holds the FRQ-IVADO Research Chair in data science. Her research interests include statistical learning, Bayesian and spatiotemporal modeling, data dimension reduction strategies, and complex correlation structures.
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Department of Civil Engineering, Polytechnique de Montréal
Francesco Ciari
Francesco obtained his master degree in Environmental engineering at the University of Florence in 2003. He obtained his PhD in transportation planning in 2012 with a dissertation titled Sharing as a key to rethink urban mobility at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich, where he worked as a senior researcher until 2017. Between 2017 and 2018, he joined Joanneum Research in Graz (Austria) as head of the Urban Living Lab research unit.​​​
Department of Civil Engineering, McGill University
Jiangbo Yu
Prof. Yu’s research focuses on sustainable and resilient transportation systems. His research lab is currently investigating the synergies of human intelligence and artificial intelligence for designing shared automated electric mobility services. The lab develops and applies various tools and methods, including system dynamics models, generative artificial intelligence, and human-feedback reinforcement learning. Before joining McGill, Prof. Yu worked as a senior engineer at AECOM and collaborated with various research institutes. ​​​​